The announcement of the arrival of one of the communiers, the objects of the bishop's hatred, revived the anger of the seigniorial ecclesiastic, that had been checked for a moment by the words of Archdeacon Anselm. The bishop jumped up, crying out: "By heaven! By the Pope's navel! That bourgeois arrives in time! Bring him in!"
"His wife too?" asked the negro, opening the door. "She will act as a counter-irritant to your worship," and without waiting for his master's answer, the negro vanished.
"Take care!" Anselm said, more and more alarmed. "Take care what you are about to do! The Councilmen are elected by the inhabitants! To do violence to one of their chosen men would be a moral offence!"
"We have had enough remonstrances!" cried out Gaudry with haughty impatience. "You seem to forget that I am your superior, your bishop!"
"It is your conduct that would make me forget it. But it is for the sake of the episcopacy, for the sake of the salvation of your soul, for the sake of your own life that I adjure you not to apply the match to a conflagration that neither yourself nor the King might be able to extinguish!"
"What!" exclaimed the bishop with a wrathful sneer; "What! That conflagration could not be extinguished even in the blood of those damned dogs, of the revolted clowns, themselves?"
The prelate had just pronounced these execrable words, when Ancel Quatre-Mains entered, accompanied by his wife, Simonne, and preceded by Black John, who, leaving them at the door of the apartment, withdrew again with a smile on his cruel lips. The Councilman was pale and deeply moved. The good nature, habitual to his features, had now made place to an expression of deliberate firmness. It must, nevertheless, be admitted that his casque thrown too far back on his head and his stomach protruding below his steel corselet imparted to the townsman an almost grotesque appearance that could not fail to strike the Bishop of Laon. Accordingly breaking out in a loud guffaw, not unmixed with rage and disdain, and pointing to Ancel, he said to the archdeacon: "Here have you a bright sample of the gallant men who are to cause bishops, knights and kings to tremble and retreat. By the blood of Christ, what a grotesque appearance!"